Project- Dividing the Frame

I have completed a further exercise and now have about 4 left to finish this part of the study programme.

The closing date for my first assignment is just around the corner but I am pleased to say that I have printed the images and they will be posted on monday.

I hope that I can complete all the exercise before the 19th November.

I am a little behind as I had to work in Dubai for over a week.

I did manage to take some images there and I may use some of them in one of my next projects.

I had also arranged to go to London with a friend, Dave Rooney, to spend a day taking some images. I had to cancel this as well but we hope to go again in three weeks.

He has taken some great images on his camera and even manages to get some interesting shots on his iphone.

Now, onto this project which is called dividing the frame.

The opening paragraph talks mainly about balance. It was helpful to see in the notes the sets of weighing sales setting out how to best balance an image so that the results are more pleasing to the eye.

I found this topic very interesting especially when you have two different objets in the frame that are of totally different sizes. The advice to place the smaller object closer to the edge of the image really works.

For the exercise I looked at a number of images that I had previously taken and I decided that some of them worked but, a lot of them did not. With that in mind I went out to various locations around Surrey and Sussex and tried to set the balance in the image before I took the shot. This was,however, more difficult than I imagined as I did not have enough time to think about the balance before I took the image. Of course some work in Photoshop could have assisted with the location of certain objects in the frame later but I wanted to see if I could balance the images as I took them.

Firstly I concentrated on placing the subject in the centre of the frame. Two examples are below:-

My take on maximum symmetry

Object in the centre of the frame

I tried to get the centre of the tunnel and the pile of logs in the centre of the frame. What do you think?

The following images have two subjects, both approximately the same size and in a similar position in the frame.

Fishermen on the hunt

The men on the beach were looking for worms for a night time fishing contest. I had a chat with them and they were happy for me to take the images.

The view of the two doors at the end of the path is balanced although the doors and their surrounds are different. After I had taken the image I feel as though I should have got a lot closer to the door and removed some of the path way.

Church Doors

For my next image I had in mind a large object in the middle of the picture with an object either side. I thought about the places where I had been in the summer and remembered a building in Brighton.

The is a clear background and I think this makes it a lot easier to see the shot I was trying to obtain. Later when I put the scales onto the picture I was pleased with the result.

Brighton

There are two errors in the image , part of the lamp on the left, which I could remove and the section of building behind the post on the right. This would be more difficult to remove but I’m sure it could be done.

I now looked at trying to obtain balance with two subjects of different size.

Later I saw A man looking at his son and I like the way that the baby held his hand up. I took the shot as the man looked up.

Father and Son

I think the result would have been better if I could have moved the dad slightly over to the left. But maybe I would have lost the shot of the child holding his hand up if I hesitated. I tried to set the depth of field so that the background did not interfere too much. The result , I think, shows just two people on a very busy Brighton Beach.

Following on from the above shot I went to Sheffield Park, West Sussex.

I took a number of images during the day looking at the colours of the trees and plants as the day light changed.

I found a wooden bench close to a tree. Although they are different shapes I like the result, so her it is:-

Sheffield Park

Looking at the image above I should have cropped the photograph more on the right and less on the left!

As I said earlier I was sent to work in Dubai, One afternoon I saw this image, I remembered a talk by a photographer who said “try to get some red in a picture.” I was lucky that after a short time a man in a red safety tabard walked across the frame.

Dubai

There is a nice reflection of him on the part of the building on the left. The man also gives a bit of scale to the image which helps you to understand how tall the buildings were.

I added the scales later but again I think that a tighter crop may have worked better.